Men Tell Us: Why Men Keep Telling Women To “Smile”

Raise your hand if you hate it when strange men on the street tell you to smile. Everyone, yes? All our hands are raised? Perhaps because it’s always distracting to be interrupted when you’re thinking seriously about something (and hence, not smiling). Perhaps it’s because it’s rude to demand that a total stranger do anything for you (though I frequently go up to men and say “do the Charleston! Now a two-step! It makes you look prettier to me!”). Perhaps because it immediately makes you feel guilty for not walking around lighting the world up with your smile, because, again, you were thinking about serious stuff.

And surely men know that women don’t like this, right? No one likes the smile police! But it happens all the time. So why do men keep doing it? I turned the question over to our man-panel: